Listening to WNYC yesterday morning, Brian Lehrer was on discussing the prospect of Walmart selling organic produce acquired from small and medium sized local farms who practice sustainable farming.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. Walmart is definitely on the top of my least favorite big box stores list. For a variety of reasons. Over the years we’ve all heard about their not so fabulous business practices from treatment of employees, to outsourcing to China to keep prices down. Lets face it Walmart put small businesses out of business. So hearing the Walmart and support small business in the same sentence is shocking, and quite frankly immediately sets off a few red flashing lights in my mind. The good news here, in my opinion, is that the whole concept off supporting small local farms has gotten mainstream enough that Walmart wants a piece of the sustainability pie! Great news right!?!
Here’s my problem, big box stores are by nature completely and utterly unsustainable! Stores like Walmart have put entire towns out of business, moved sources for goods from our own towns and surrounding cities to countries on the other side of the world. They thrive off the concept of buying cheap, throwing out, and buying cheap again. Thus filling our landfills with unnecessary waste.
It’s all a bit frustrating. If it takes a superstore like Walmart to revive small farms, to get more farms to practice sustainable farming, then that would truly be fantastic. However I can’t help but be wary of what’s going on. You can read about Walmart’s Sustainable Agriculture Goals here.
I’d love to hear your opinions on this topic.
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